Waters threatens to sue ethics panel

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is threatening to take the House Ethics Committee to federal court if the secretive panel charges her with any violations of House rules.

Waters’ attorney, Stan Brand, made the threat in a Tuesday letter to Reps. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), the chairman and ranking member of the Ethics Committee, just as the committee was scheduled to hold a meeting on what to do with the long-running Waters case.

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Brand states that “any further action by this Committee [against Waters] be irremediably tainted and without legal foundation.”

Brand cited revelations laid out in a POLITICO story on Monday that revealed bitter internal disputes within the Ethics Committee over the Waters case. Blake Chisam, the former staff director and chief counsel for the Ethics Committee, accused the two lead investigators in the Waters probe of secretly feeding information to Republicans on the Ethics Committee, including Bonner. Chisam also accused the staffers of misleading lawmakers and other staff on the status of the investigation.

These two former Ethics Committee staffers in question, Morgan Kim and Stacey Sovereign, have in turn accused Chisam and his former boss, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), of trying to go soft on Democrats like Waters and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).

Based on the POLITICO story, Brand laid out several “categories of misconduct by current Committee members and staff,” including “prohibited and prejudicial ex parte communications” between Kim, Sovereign and Republicans on the panel; “internal and malicious misleading of members and staff relating to the investigation” by the two ex-staffers; “Evidence of partiality and bias” against Waters; “the use of trumped-up federal obstruction and perjury charges by Committee counsel…”; and “the illegal leaking of confidential Committee documents, transcripts, emails and other information to the media to create a misimpression regarding both the strength of the case against [Waters] and the Commitee ability to proceed with the case.”

Brand said “this misconduct … implicates Congresswoman Waters’ constitutional and statutory rights, which which we would seek to vindicate in federal court should that action be necessitated by the Committee.”

Brand argued that the “misconduct is of such a fundamentally improper level that it cannot be cured by reliance on any other device, including employment of an outside counsel. Simply put, given the foregoing history, the Committee can never conduct an impartial and unbiased inquiry into this matter.”

Brand said Waters defense team has “concluded that any further action, save from formal acknowledgement of dismissal, is legally precluded and indefensible.”

Waters was charged last year with three ethics violations related to her actions in 2008 on behalf of a minority owned bank where Waters’ husband owned more than $350,000 in stock. OneUnited Bank, run by a Waters supporter, eventually received more than $12 million in federal bailout funding.

Waters denied any improper behavior on behalf of OneUnited, and she has been waging a bitter legal and political fight with the Ethics Committee over the allegations.

The Ethics Committee was expected to meet Tuesday afternoon to discuss the status of the Waters matter, which has been on hold for more than eight months since a trial was postponed in November.